2013 Amsterdam Music Festival

By Andrew Hong

The term “international” is often thrown around to describe events or places where many people from different countries are in the same areas.  Despite the ubiquity of that term, it wasn’t until last Saturday (October 19^th), where I felt that I was in a truly international venue – the 2013 Amsterdam Music Festival.  Whenever one travels to a different country, they are not completely in an international zone – in Germany, for instance, the majority of the people we interact with are Germans.  While you may encounter people from other countries, it is most often in an ancillary fashion: they just happen to be traveling in the same country you are in.  At AMF, I had experienced something that I was not expecting, thousands of people from all over the world in one place for a single purpose – to enjoy some of the finest electronic dance music.

            To backtrack somewhat, the Amsterdam Music Festival is primarily a festival for electronic dance music (more commonly referred to as EDM) which had its roots in the disco movement of the 1970s but ended up reaching new heights in the 1980s before finally reaching its widest audience (and large mainstream appeal) in the last ten years.[1]  Additionally, one subgenre of electronic music, trance, was even formed in Germany, with the first examples of the subgenre appearing in Frankfurt in the early 1990s.[2]  More melodic and uplifting than other forms of electronic dance music, trance music is highly popular in Europe – one of the primary reasons why I wanted to go to an electronic music festival in Europe.   While there were a multitude of world-renowned DJs who played a variety of different electronic subgenres, I would certainly rank Dutch producer Armin van Buuren’s trance-centric music set to be my favorite for the entire night.  While other music sets relied on heavy bass and sheer volume to get the crowd excited, Armin van Buuren’s music cut into one’s emotion, giving the music far more depth.

           

The music festival itself was an unbelievable combination of an incredible light show with amazing music – but what impressed me the most was the overall feeling of unity and connectivity I felt with my fellow ravers.  I was in awe about how thousands of people from dozens of different countries would travel all the way to the Netherlands in order to enjoy music together.  Whenever you walked throughout the entire venue, you would hear snatches of conversation in Dutch, German, French and a score of different languages.  On the dance floor itself, many had brought their respective countries’ flags – prompting one of the DJs to ask the crowd which countries everybody was from.  Whenever he stated a country’s name, literally hundreds (thousands in the case of Netherlands) of voices would cheer in response.  The energy of the crowd, coupled with the overall atmosphere of the entire festival, carried me throughout until the night until the early morning – even though I had already spent a long day sightseeing in Amsterdam prior to the festival.  With its unique international atmosphere, astonishing music and its lineup of legendary producers and DJs, the Amsterdam Music Festival was certainly a once in a lifetime experience.

For Video of the event to to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTlzz4yL6X8&list=FLHrIaMw9Wc5PQuS--4j9kXQ&index=4

OR

http://edmchicago.com/dj-mag-awards-amsterdam-music-festival-2013-live-sets/

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[1] http://edmmusicjunkies.com/?page_id=31

[2]  Fassbender, Torsten (2008). The Trance Experience. Knoxville, Tennessee: Sound Org Inc.